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I’m Afraid Of My Shadow

I am cowardly and twitchy and I scare super easy. 11 months out of the year you couldn’t get me to watch a scary movie for anything. Commercials for horror movies are enough to keep me up at night.

…but October is different…

Halloween is coming! And that means I need to watch eery movies and read books I’m not emotionally strong enough to handle. Yes, it is indeed insane to watch horror movies when I know I’m a pansy but I just have to. Why? Because I was BORN ON HALLOWEEN!!! Yes, the actual day of All Hallows Eve. October 31st! To not watch scary movies would be disrespectful of the gift I have been given. And so for the 31 days of the greatest month of the year I over-indulge and then spend the next 11 months looking over my shoulder.

When I was younger I started out with the gateway horror:

Actually, I take that back: that show was f***ing terrifying. Scooby Doo was (and is) a little more my speed.

So every year I watch at least one scary movie and then I can’t sleep for the rest of the year. After 10-11 months the memories fade and I start to return to normalcy, but then it’s October again and I eagerly make the same mistakes. (vicious cycle).

In fact, I’m still paying for 2 years ago when I accidentally watched the first Paranormal Activity. How does one “accidentally” watch a movie? That’s a fair question. The answer is that when you crash on your sister’s couch after a Halloween party and her husband decides to watch it it’s just inevitable. I guess a more accurate description though would be that I watched half of the movie, since I watched it like this:

I didn’t sleep that night, or the following several months. Happy Birthday to me!

Rewind a couple of years. I watched “From Hell” about Jack the Ripper and that poor choice cost me a cell phone. Let me explain. A few moments in to the movie I was already in the fetal position. I didn’t realize that I was holding the phone against my stomach until a particularly graphic scene. The second this girl got stabbed my phone started vibrating against my stomach. Assuming that I was being murdered (don’t judge, you weren’t there) I screamed and threw the phone against the wall with enough force that it shattered.

R.I.P. Crappy Outdated Flip Phone

And the worst of them all. Living by myself for the first time I fooled myself into believing that a horror movie on TV wouldn’t be as bad as the real thing bc they would have to edit certain things out to make it TV appropriate. Well folks, I was wrong. That was bound to happen eventually. So, back to the story. It was just like every other scary movie that has come out in the past 10 years, meaning it was about little kid ghosts. I don’t know why that’s a trend; it’s sick. So in this charming little tale the kid/ghost was crawling across the ceiling.

Later that night my dog sat staring at the ceiling for 5 minutes straight and then she went absolutely-flippin-nuts barking at that spot on the ceiling. I seriously considered burning the house down. Then I considered moving. Then I remembered I have no money and burrowed under the blankets to hide like a big girl.

But I love it! I love eery stories, tales from Hitchcock and Poe. In fact, I wrote my senior thesis in college on Edgar Allen Poe…at a Christian school. They didn’t know what to make of me.

I love stories that can’t be explained and that make you look over your shoulder. At least I love them until I want to sleep, then I’m not so thrilled with my life choices.

So please, enjoy this as my gift to you, to get you in the Halloween spirit. Poe’s The Raven, read by Christopher Walken (who was once voted the creepiest man alive) in his weird, awesome accent. Keep this image of him in mind as you listen